Hellbender

The Good
Amount of Weapons it had; see full review below.

The Bad
Length; see full review below.

The Bottom Line
Let's get to brass tacks and nails. Hellbender is old, ancient even by tech standards. Yet, this game still stands up on its feet. Made in 1996, and cutting edge for the time, Hellbender took the player across 8 planets, each with 3 "Episodes" (missions). This game, alongside Deadly Tide, were the spotlight of what Windows exclusives were like. Featuring 10 different weapons, and even a secret weapon scattered across the game's 8 planets, it was a game that, toward the end, fit to its tagline "Shoot to Kill. Think to Win." quite well. While I sadly don't own the game anymore (as of this review, yet), I can tell you that, barring a little setup issues (mostly getting the installer to run), it plays perfectly fine on modern hardware. If you can find a copy, take it for a whirl.

The Good
Lots of action, lots of things to shoot at, good graphics for its time, actually supports 640x480 resolution, combination of challenges, from air to ground to underground, some enemies only vulnerable to certain weapons

The Bad
Lousy draw distance that's not adjustable, it's all kill kill kill with no variation, almost impossible to tell if you're doing damage against the regular enemies, razor thin plot

The Bottom Line
Hellbender is a quintessential 3D shooter that lets you go in any direction and shoot anything (unless you're not supposed to). The razor-thin plot has just enough to get you started... As the sole remaining pilot in an experimental fighter, you are the last hope of humanity against the evil Bion invaders. Yipee. Where have I heard that before?

Once you're inside the game, it's time to get the adrenalin pumping. You'll be shooting at enemy fighters in the air, ground defenses and structures (and even some mobile units) on the ground, as well as explore tunnels and such for more objectives.

Your craft does have shields, which can be replenished by diverting power from main engines. However, most of your energy will be used by the weapons systems, as firing guns actually does use up energy here. If you deplete the weapons energy, it will fire slower and slower. Thus, managing energy becomes a challenge. I see this energy canister. Should I use this on more weapons energy to kill things faster, or should I dump it into shields so I can survive longer?

You get a nice variety of weapons. The default valkyrie gun is decent and with full energy can be quite devastating. You also get dispersion cannon (kind of energy shotgun), two types of lasers, dumbfire missile, air to air missile, air to ground missile, dual-use missile, exploding missile, recharge missile, and a big exploding mine to wrap up the list. Each of the weapons feel different (except the two lasers, which feels about the same) and are used at different times against different enemies.

Each of the worlds is different, from jungle scapes to desert to volcanic to asteroid field. Part of the fun is the explore the underground passages for hidden caches of weapon pods which you can then crack and claim the contents for yourself. Indeed, it's the only way to get more ammo for the missiles and such. Just think of it as your normal "powerup". Your ship also happens to have infinite storage space... It's not unusual to stock up hundreds of missiles and mines in your ship at all (esp. on easy level of difficulty)

The enemies are relentless, and often they seem to pop up from nowhere. Your craft is not that fast and often enemy can chase you down, but there is afterburner (called turbo here) available. However, turbo fuel is limited. The limited view distance doesn't help. Fortunately, many of the ground units can only shoot flat (i.e. they can't aim upward).

Every once in a while you run into a "boss" creature who guards the level. While they can be fairly tough, they aren't that hard to kill with sufficient firepower (and if you don't shoot too much you should have plenty of ordnance piled on already).

The main problem with the game is it cannot quite decide whether it wants to be a pure shooter or be a bit of a puzzle. In the later levels, you run into "puzzles", like "push these switches and see which one opens the next section". If you guess wrong, most of the time nothing happens. Every once in a while, you run into a "crushing celing" switch. In that case, you better have a save game to restore from...

While I don't mind the action and the puzzles, the puzzles breaks up the momentum of the game too much. And if you don't die from the enemies but die in a puzzle's crushing ceiling, it just makes you want to toss the game out the window.

Some enemies are resistant to certain types of weapons, which can be troublesome later as you can't tell if you're really doing damage against them or not. With the bosses, there's a bargraph, but not for the regular enemies.

The graphics were state-of-the-art back then, but the low drawing distance is not adjustable, even on a higher-end system. Frame rates are high and graphics are decent (for its time), with pretty intricate terrain and enemy ships/structures (again, for its time). It actually uses 3D acceleration and actually runs fine in Windows 98 (for a game from 1996, it's remarkable).

All in all, Hellbender is as much action game as it is a technical demo of what Windows is capable of as a game machine. It has some of everything and should still delight action fans.